


A Still Thing Growing

by stuffwelike



Category: History Boys (2006)
Genre: College, M/M, Music, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuffwelike/pseuds/stuffwelike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Scripps forgets he has a secret, Posner takes offence at Debussy, and Dakin is highly amused by everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Still Thing Growing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [obstinatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinatrix/gifts).



_I feel a poem in my heart to-night,_  
A still thing growing,—  
As if the darkness to the outer light  
A song were owing:  
A something strangely vague, and sweet, and sad,  
Fair, fragile, slender;  
Not tearful, yet not daring to be glad,  
And oh, so tender!   
— Mary Ashley Townsend

 

Evensong. Clear as a call to prayer, and just as demanding, the sound of Tom Tower's bell, ringing out the last seconds to sprint down St Aldate's and make it inside just in time to pull on a gown and look as though waiting for the choir to walk in was a way of life, and not a barely-scraped timing of how many quick strides the hill to Christ Church took, from the first bell to the last.

To sit, and stand, and listen to the Magnificat, to the Nunc Dimittis, to think _let me depart in peace_ — and know that only thirty-five minutes of his life had gone, while his mind had strained to find his soul and comprehend the dullness of the infinite.

And to know as well that even though the whole rush of it had taken less than an hour, he was still woefully behind on his work.

Essay topics for what had been a week's worth of work what seemed like only seconds ago, and were now a desperate, mad fumble that needed to be finished in an overnight essay-crisis.

But still, he could not regret the time he had taken for himself. This would centre him, give him focus — something he needed badly of late. Not that the problem he was experiencing was anything new, it was just damn inconvenient to be mooning away time that he bloody well needed.

And yet he could not — quite — start to do what he was not only supposed to be focused on, but was already late for.

Instead, he began to scrawl, once again, in the journal he had decided to keep, to teach himself how to discipline his mind, to teach himself that the historian is a writer, the historian is an author, the historian is self-inscribed, the historian is — a journalist.  
 __  
I heard the words of the Nunc Dimittis again. And I looked at the windows. And I didn't hear anything new. And I sit here, and I don't see anything new in the words I've been given to read, and I don't have anything new to say, and why say it? I've got no insight and nor does anyone else in this bloody university. We just tell ourselves we do, because if we don't? There's no good to the stupid life God gave us, no good to our intelligence, no good to the only success we've had so far.

_We're the top 3% in the country._

_And half of us aren't even going to get a 2:1._

Scripps paused, gazing out of the window for a long moment before he continued.

_I know which half I want to be included in and it's not the half that fails._

He closed his journal and turned toward his desk determined to, at the very least, make enough order there so that he could find his notes.

***BAM…BAM…BAM***

"What the—?" Someone apparently wanted into his room very badly…or out of the hallway, at least. It sounded as if whoever it was had a sledgehammer and was using it on the door frame.

He just hoped it wasn't anyone too drunk. Not that he hadn't been rat-arsed himself, and banged on doors, and left incomprehensible notes on the pads pinned to those same doors, but he really, really didn't want to deal with someone that out of it when it wasn't even eight o'clock in the evening.

He wanted to put down his words, his meaningless words, and tick the boxes —

_analysis of language_

_appropriate use of terminology_

_discussion and linking of quotes to analysis_

_reference to terms of question_

— without having to think about whether someone was going to drink the last of his good vodka, put on all his music way too loudly, and pass out on his bed after throwing up and missing his wastepaper bin.

***BAM…BAM…BAM***

"Come on, Scripps. I know you've got to be in there. Please open the door….I'm begging you." The all too familiar whine of David Posner came through the door.

Scripps dropped his head down on the desk, knocking it helplessly against the cheap wood several times, before looking towards the door. Of all the things he didn't need right now, this was probably at the top of his list — his primary distraction knocking on his door.

He stood with a sigh, and opened the door.

And promptly found his arms full of paper and books, Posner having shoved them at him the moment the door was open.

"And hello to you too." Scripps said with a perplexed grin.

"Ah, Scripps...I don't know what this is. I don't know what it means. I'm going to flunk out and be sent home in disgrace, to live my life in ignominious failure....on the dole." David collapsed on the bed in a dramatic heap.

"You don't know what **what** is?" Scripps dropped the pile of papers and books on the foot of the bed.

"The City of God. The City of God…" The repeat was even more forlorn than the first enunciation. "I'm Jewish. What do I know about St. Augustine? And I have an essay due at the end of the week. Help me…."

Scripps took a deep breath, rejected all inclinations to get involved with any of that in any way, pathetic excuses and all, and then replied, "I have three essays, and two of them are overdue, and the third is going to be overdue in the next hour or so, and my tutor is going to kill me and then I am going to kill you because I will RISE FROM THE GRAVE to achieve this."

Posner was still collapsed on the bed, artistically arranged in his best languid heroine pose, "And I will let you....because I have no more room in my brain for another bit of information. It will be a relief to be dead."

"Yeah, but I'm not that nice. I'll only kill you if I am ALREADY DEAD and risen from the grave, as I said, and I don't mean for that to happen, so go away, find your relief somewhere else and from, please God, _anyone_ else, and let me write the. Damn. Essays."

"Wait, seriously, THREE overdue?"

Scripps turned in his chair, glaring at his desk, because if he looked at Posner…well, even his new resolve might falter, "Please. Please. Please fuck off. NOW."

"Three. Really? Three? " Posner stalked over to where Scripps was purposefully ignoring him. "That's— Well, actually that makes me feel a bit better about my one, but still... Why didn't you ask me for help?"

Scripps put his head back and closed his eyes, not quite sure as to whether he was asking for divine guidance, amazing grace, or the patience to not throw Posner out of the room bodily. "Because I have things to say, Pos, that means answering the question that my tutor, who is not your tutor, asked me. To answer. In an essay. Which won't interest you because you want to bring in all Hector's sentiment and none of his reading."

"And you think something is wrong with Hector's sentiment?" Posner frowned. "I mean, I know that Irwin thought—"

"This has nothing to do with Irwin. It has nothing to do with you. It only has to do with me…and this…" Scripps waved a hand over the disaster that was, underneath it all, his desk, "…and that's all I can think about at the moment."

"All you can think about?" And Scripps knew what he meant by that, that he meant _no more music?_ and _no more God?_ and thought wildly in response to those unsaid words _this isn't anything I need to talk about, not with you, least of all with you,_ and hunted through his papers for the transcript he wanted, rather than address any of it directly. 

"Yeah," he said instead with an all-purpose vagueness, already attempting to become lost in his readings.

He should have noticed, he thought later, the fact that Posner just left at that, rather than crashing back down on his bed. But seriously. _Three essays._

He really could be forgiven a little distraction.

And the fact that he had still somehow neglected to mention just why he was so busy. Or Julia. Or Debussy.

He was to think later that as the self-acknowledged voice of such sanity as Hector's boys had possessed, he had been rather overdue a time of monumental stupidity.

It was still rather impressive, as stupidity went.

**

Scripps bowed slightly as he came out onto the stage, moving to the piano and then holding out one hand to beckon Julia out from the other wing. This was her moment, and she had worked very hard (so incredibly hard that a little bit of him had bled for her, thinking of how unimportant this concert was in the grand scheme of things, and how invested she still was in making herself perfect, regardless of how people would see her role) on the piece they were about to play. He was hoping against hope that he did not let her down. It was a lovely piece, Debussy at his impressionist, lyrical height of virtuosity, and he felt fairly competent about his part in it — even though a pianist was the last thing he considered himself to be.

Julia had rehearsed until her fingers calloused and peeled and toughened again, pushing herself far beyond the hours she was used to. Scripps had fled into research as much as practice hours, looking for the hook that could inspire him to keep up with her — and found what he needed.

Debussy had played the piano part himself at the sonata's premiere. The first performance for the work — and the last for the composer himself.

 _Swansong,_ Scripps had thought, and imagined how delighted Hector would have been, that he was connecting to music through an emotion long lost to a curt sentence in history.

Julia took her place and Scripps smiled at her, giving her a wink with his upstage eye, hidden from the audience. She returned it, the smile if not the wink, gave him a gentle nod and they were off and running. 

He kept one eye on her and one on the keys, adjusting to match her tempo and volume. It was a smooth mesh, fortunately, due to their practicing.

And it was good, it was so very very good, to be lost to tangible accomplishment, to not think of composers or swansongs or pointless enamoration —

_It will pass._

_What if I don't want it to?_

— and just to inhabit the moment, the music, the notes and the silence and the space between them; to be aware of nothing more than the flex of Julia's wrist and the way her shoulders moved with breath and concentration.

There was nothing in the world but the sonata, the delivery of it, the creation of it, the knowledge that he was writing something new even while he was playing something almost a hundred years old. 

_There's no such thing as absolute music,_ he reminded himself as they drew to their seamless close. 

But for that moment, it felt as though there was. And Julia, gasping with relief and adrenaline, her bow hand finally shaking that one little fraction as she lowered it, smiled and smiled, despite the tears in her eyes, and he knew that she felt it too.

They took their bows to enthusiastic applause and then departed the stage, hand in hand.

"Oh, God! Oh, God!" Julia's voice was terse with excitement but lowered to avoid disturbing the next performers preparing to take the stage. "That was…. you were… it was just… God, we did good, didn't we?"

Scripps chuckled softly, "Yes, I think we managed a creditable performance."

"Creditable, my arse," she snorted back at him and then threw her arms around his neck, planting an enthusiastic and somewhat sloppy kiss on the corner of his mouth. "We were perfect. I couldn't have managed without you, Don, really."

Scripps wanted to say something brilliant and gracious and downplay the whole thing, and was reduced instead to grinning like an idiot and looking down at the floor, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck and mumbling, "Yeah, well. Seriously. Pleasure. All mine."

Julia snorted with laughter, sounding like a demented seal as she tried to choke it back and breathe at the same time. The MusSoc director glared at them from the back of the hall.

"Oops," Julia said in a kind of constricted squeak.

"Run for it?"

Julia nodded frantically.

And they did, dashing out the stage door and into the cool night air, pausing only long enough for Julia to grab her violin case.

Scripps held it open for her, once they managed to get over their whoops of excited adrenalin-filled laughter. "God, that was… well, let's just say I never had such an enthralled audience back at Cutler's."

"Well, boys…" Julia said, as if that explained it all, her eyes sparkling with humour.

Scripps, overcome with a sudden terrible memory of Dakin, Lockwood, and Akthar's rendition of the world's most unbelievable and unhistorically French hospital, thought it just might. It wasn't a memory he was in the least bit inclined to share, though, mostly because that way led things like confessions and mentioning Pos's name, and he had been enjoying his heady sense of accomplishment far too much to self-sabotage his evening with an untimely debate of his ongoing woes.

"Boys and a very, very small audience to start with," he agreed instead. "But I do a mean impression of a vaudeville act."

Julia stared at him.

"Do I want to know?" she said at last. Scripps thought about it.

"....No," he said after a pause, opting for honesty. "Really, really no."

Julia grinned. "Well, _now_ I'm intrigued!"

Scripps, about to launch into his justly-renowned impersonation of Timms impersonating Bette Davis, was more than a little irritated when he was interrupted by a quiet voice saying from behind them —

"Well done."

"Oh… um… Hello, Pos. Thanks." Scripps frowned for a moment, then continued somewhat reluctantly. "Oh… Julia Westham, David Posner. David, Julia."

"A pleasure," Pos nodded. "And really, your playing was lovely."

"Thanks!"

"I tried to get Scripps to perform with me but he said he was too busy," Posner's voice was oddly uneven. "Now I see what had him so tied up."

"Debussy over a — what did you call it, Donald? Vaudeville act? — unimaginable, isn't it?" Julia's voice was sharp, euphoria giving way to the post-adrenaline crash that made everything into an imagined criticism. Scripps closed his eyes and sighed.

"Actually, that would have been Dakin," he said flatly. "Endless amusement, on tap. But never good for accompaniment chances."

He opened his eyes to see them both staring at him.

"...Right," Posner said at last.

"Sorry," Julia said, less rattled and more sincere. "I — that was mean."

Posner waved a hand as if brushing away flies. "Don't worry about it."

"No, I don't even know where that came from —"

"It's fine, honestly, I should have stopped at well done —"

"Yeah, but —" Julia shrugged and half-laughed. "Boys," she said, as though it were self-explanatory.

"Sadly, yes," Posner agreed.

"I'm in the fucking Twilight Zone," Scripps said to the street lamp, which seemed to be the most sympathetic presence there.

"Look, Donald, I'm off. My parents were down for the performance and we're going out for a late supper." Julia took her violin case out of his hands. "Meet you at the coffee house on Queen's lane after your nine o'clock lecture?"

"Oh… sure, Jules." Why was this all so awkward? Aside from Posner's sniping, that was? "And again, thanks for letting me perform with you. It was a lovely experience."

"It was, wasn't it?" She laughed, gave him a quick hug and then trotted off towards the front of the Hall, pausing only to call back over her shoulder, "Nice to meet you, David."

"Oh… yes, you too." Posner replied flatly.

Scripps managed to remain silent until Julia was out of sight, before demanding incredulously —

" _Tied up?_ "

" _Vaudeville act?_ " Posner snapped back , equally annoyed.

"You asked me if I had the time, and I said no, I didn't, because I was _already accompanying someone_ , what did you _think_ I meant?"

"I didn't realize you meant 'for the same fucking concert'!"

"I didn't realize you thought you had property rights on my time!"

"Three essays," Posner said, in mocking disgust. "Three late essays. All because of Debussy and a pretty violinist. And you've got the _nerve_ to laugh at Dakin."

"Dakin is funny." Scripps gave way to frustration and shouted. "You always seemed to think so. And the essays weren't late because of— No, really, it's none of your damn business why they were late, they just were."

"Fine!"

"Fine!" Scripps all but growled.

"Fine!" Posner turned and stomped back towards the Hall, his back stiff.

"Forgive me for saying this," said the second least welcome person in Scripps's miserable excuse for a post-concert celebration so far, "but Scrippsy, that's about as far from fine as I've ever seen either of you."

"Dakin, I'm starting to think you really _are_ the devil."

"Yep. Say my name, and up I pop. I came to the concert, you fucking tosser."

"And you stayed around for the —"

"Vaudeville act," Dakin agreed, and smirked. "Damn, you really choose your moments."

"Says the master of timing," Scripps said wearily, and leant against the lamp post with a sigh.

"Want to go get pissed?" Dakin asked after a moment of not unfriendly silence.

"Oh God, _yes_."

**

 _I am never drinking with Dakin again,_ Scripps lied to himself in the hope that thinking it would make it true rather than a futile hope. _Never, ever again._

He was still only one essay down from his monumental total of owed work, he'd endured a full two-day hangover, and all in the name of some highly dubious whiskey, and the feeling he'd let rather too much slip to a man who only paid attention at the most inconvenient times. Times when kindly ignoring what was being said, or at least pretending to have alcohol-induced amnesia, was the better and more friendly choice.

Then again, it was Dakin. It wasn't as though Scripps hadn't known better years ago.

***BAM…BAM…BAM***

Scripps jumped, his elbow colliding with the stack of books on the edge of his desk, causing them all to cascade to the floor.

"Fuck. Doesn't anyone around here know how to knock without breaking the door down?" He sighed and began cleaning up the mess. "Come in!"

"Don't mind if I do," Dakin's head popped around the corner of the door. "You look much better than you did the last time I saw you."

"Yeah, well, I was a bit pissed, wasn't I?"

"Beyond pissed and into sloppy," Dakin agreed cheerfully. "Good job you don't have to worry about brewer's droop, what with your whole celibacy —"

"Oh, fuck off."

"—thing," Dakin finished, undeterred. "Which is a stupid thing. And as a not stupid person and your best mate —"

"Jesus, when did I get landed with that one?"

"— I have taken it upon myself to finally have my reward."

"...Er," said Scripps, various nightmare visions of Irwin suddenly appearing in his room coming to mind. "Please no?"

"Unfettered access, you said."

"I didn't say I wanted to watch!"

"And I didn't say _I_ meant me," Dakin said smugly. Then he smiled, small and secretive, amused and self-congratulatory as a cat in a fishery. "Well, this time I didn't."

Scripps looked at him. Dakin kept smirking. The world failed to make any more sense with applied thought.

"Please go away?" he tried, feebly.

"No… because I do so hate it when mummy and daddy fight." Dakin reached back out the door and pulled a somewhat resistant Posner into the room behind him. "See? Much better than easy access to dicks that shall remain nameless."

Posner looked justifiably confused.

Scripps groaned and banged his forehead against the stack of books he was still holding. _I am never fucking drinking with Dakin again, ever,_ he repeated to himself sternly, even as he moaned to an uncaring copy of Froissart, "Why is this my life? Why?"

"See, he's busy," Posner said, trying to leave as quickly as he had entered.

"He's not busy, he's a git," Dakin said. "I'd call him a wanker, but as far as I know —"

"Oh Jesus fucking wept," Scripps said to his books.

"—that comes on the list of things we stupidly avoid."

"Can I go now?" Posner asked the ceiling.

"Can _I_ go now?" Scripps asked his books.

"Can you both get over yourselves?" Dakin demanded.

They both stared at him, their expressions slightly horrified.

"Or better yet, get over each other," Dakin continued. "And I mean that in the happy naked way."

"Oh, God…"

"I think God's dead," Posner said in blank horror.

"Or ran screaming," Scripps agreed. "Congratulations, Dakin, you've proved atheism is the way forward."

Dakin beamed.

"That wasn't a compliment!"

"Yeah, it was, and an expression of your undying gratitude, I'm just so super-sensitive that I know what you really meant."

"Yeah, good point, I really meant fuck off and die, so glad you tuned in."

"You know you love me." Dakin cackled and ducked out the door just fast enough to avoid the book that Scripps threw at him.

"This was completely not my idea," Posner said in his own defence. 

"Yeah, I was pretty sure of that from the beginning," Scripps sighed, picking up his book from the floor and then depositing the whole stack back onto the corner of the desk. Dakin could always talk Posner into just about anything without even trying.

"I mean, I was going to apologise —"

"It's fine," Scripps said tiredly. "Look, can we just consider this a nice mutual 'sorry I was a prat' moment and move on to 'how do we torture Dakin for doing this'?"

"Um," said Posner, and then, surprisingly firmly, "No."

"Okay, _I'll_ think about torture, you carry on with your pining, life's back to normal, glad we talked."

"Who told you I was pining?" Posner actually sounded shocked. Scripps stared at him.

"Er, you. A bit repeatedly, really. 'Oh, the pain'!" he mocked, not unkindly. "It's not that I mind, but seriously, _who told me_? Am I supposed to have been deaf the last few years?"

"Oh…that."

"Yes… 'Oh that'," Scripps sat back down at his desk. "I actually do listen to you, you know? Always have done."

"Well stop." Pos frowned at him.

"What?"

"I mean… um… I'd like to think I've kind of outgrown some of that." He picked up one of the books on the desk and thumbed through it idly. "Or…well… finally realized that Dakin is Dakin and isn't ever going to change…that. At least not for me."

"Not for anyone," Scripps said as gently as he could. "And he shouldn't. No-one should change for someone else."

"How about for themselves?"

"Sure, that's the only acceptable reason."

"And you know this because —"

"Tried, it didn't take." Scripps attempted a smile that must have looked as horrible as it felt, because Posner actually winced. "Oh, come on, don't look like that, you know I've got self-preservation in spades."

"And I don't?"

"Dakin," Scripps pointed out.

"Julia, Debussy, and three late essays," Posner retorted.

"Yeah, but I'm not pining over Julia."

"Just carrying her violin case," Posner said with a faint smirk, and Scripps rolled his eyes.

"Yes, because it's called being polite, and because I wasn't raised by wolves. Or hatched by sharks. Or in fact Dakin."

"Good thing, that, the world only needs one of him."

"The world can only _take_ one of him," Scripps corrected. "It doesn't really need him at all."

"That's rather mean of you… quite true, but still rather mean," Posner's lip twitched.

"Everyone's allowed a sin now and then," Scripps shrugged. 

"Now that's one rule Dakin lives by."

They both chuckled at that.

"So…." Scripps said after a moment.

"Yeah…." Posner was equally eloquent.

"Can we just—"

"I wanted to tell you—"

They both spoke at the same time and then went silent.

"You wanted to tell me?" Scripps repeated a bit hopelessly.

"Well, I didn't, but I do —" Posner started, and then his eyes went wide. "You're not pining over Julia."

"I said that."

"No, I mean you're not pining over _Julia_."

"This is what you wanted to tell me? Because I think I knew that much already — _why are you smiling like that_?"

"Because," Posner said, sounding as though he was having the best drug trip of his life, "you're not pining over Julia."

"Yes...this has now been very much established and you're starting to worry me. Did Dakin break you on the way over? Because he's been told not to do that."

"No…no," Posner shook his head gleefully, then leaned in closer to Scripps. "The question is then, who are you pining for?"

"I….I'm not. Don't be ridiculous."

"You are."

"I'm no— Look, let's not start this."

"Why not?"

"Because we're not actually six years old."

"Do six year olds pine?"

"Do you know that you've rendered that word meaningless?"

Posner nodded, looking far too happy for someone intent on brutalizing the English language he supposedly loved. "Because it is!"

"Oh joy, you've finally gone round the bend," Scripps said. "Did you have to do it in my room?"

Posner actually looked thoughtful for a moment, and then the frankly terrifying smile reappeared on his face. "Yes," he said definitely.

" _Why_?" Scripps asked. He was pretty sure he was asking the universe, rather than Posner, because getting sense out of him was obviously a futile exercise, but he thought it was question that needed asking.

Even if he really meant was 'Why me, dear God, why me?'

"Because you're in your room," Posner said, an explanation that wasn't at all.

"Yes I am," Scripps said helpfully. "I'd like to not be. But yes, here I am. In my room."

"Which is why I have to be here," Posner clarified.

"Er," said Scripps.

Posner rolled his eyes to the ceiling, muttered something under his breath that didn't sound very complimentary at all, leant in even further, and kissed him.

With a complete and rather painful lack of expertise.

It was horrifying, and terrible and, well, actually rather sweet and endearing. 

_No…no…no…!_ his panicked mind shouted. _I wasn't going to do this._

Unfortunately the rest of him was saying, _Oh God YES, more please._

It was really a toss-up as to which would win out.

"Um….." Pos stepped back, looking elated and just a bit terrified.

"Eloquent," Scripps said, blinking at him, and aware that he wasn't doing much better himself.

"Er...."

"Also er," Scripps said, a kind of manic glee starting to fill him.

"Say something!"

"I...did?"

Posner gaped at him, his mouth opening and closing silently, and then said "Something else?"

Scripps gave him a long, steady look, holding it just long enough so that Posner actually started to look worried, and then said slowly, "You're not pining over Dakin."

"I...know?"

"And so does Dakin," Scripps said, starting to laugh. "And so does Julia. And so — okay, no, who else knows?"

"You, hopefully?" Posner said uncertainly.

"Yeah." Scripps grinned. "Yeah. And me."

"I was...going to say something. Properly. I think there was a quote?" Posner was blinking rather rapidly, his face reddening with embarrassment, and Scripps, filled with affection and amusement and astonishment at his own idiocy, shook his head.

"Don't worry about it," he said, "I think I've got this one covered."

It was a bit sad, he thought, that even with his own self-imposed rules that led to, as Dakin put it, never getting any ever, he was still a damn sight better at initiating a kiss than Posner.

Then again, it was pretty hard not to be.

Posner broke away, blinking, "We aligned mouths. We entwined. All act was clutch,  
All fact contact, the attack and the interlock  
Of tongues, the charms of arms. I shook at the touch  
Of his fresh flesh, I rocked at the shock of his co—-"

"Auden? Really?"

"I panicked."

"Yes," Scripps said a bit dryly. "I'm just grateful it wasn't 'Funeral Blues'."

Posner's horrified expression was all he could have asked for, but Scripps managed to keep his smile to himself, for once.

After all, there was another poet who'd said it all far better.

_kisses are a better fate  
than wisdom_

— _Too bloody right,_ Scripps thought, and took the advice.


End file.
